Those involved in weight training and muscle development have long used auxiliary equipment which may be grasped by the user or attached to the body. This equipment generally seeks to create specific forces opposing body movement, imposing a load on certain specific muscles. The resultant effort by those muscles leads to a desired improvement of body condition. A more limited objective may be to use such exercises to reduce fat deposits, especially in places on the body where unseemly bulk builds up on an otherwise trim or acceptable body shape.
Accordingly, exercising equipment has been developed to promote exercises directed to such shaping. U.S. Pat. No. 3,820,781, issued to John F. Kane on Jun. 28, 1974, is representative and is directed to waist exercisers providing a pole positioned on the back of the user's neck and cooperating in body twisting exercises. Kane uses sections screwed onto ends of the pole to increase the weight of the pole and thus the effort required to overcome the pole's inertia during exercises.
Tethered attachement to the body is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,277,062, issued to Mark Lawrence on Jul. 7, 1981. However, the Lawrence invention is not usable for twisting exercises to improve the waist.
Integral resistance within the equipment is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,623,146, issued to Byron R. Jackson on Nov. 18, 1986. There is no anchoring at the waist area of the user, and resistance operating in the same direction as that provided in the present invention is absent.